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Three Hacks To Help You Increase Organic Traffic With Voice Search

Aaron Haynes now oversees the marketing strategy and development of several businesses through his agency Fenix Pro.

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Online search users are excited about voice search. Its popularity has only grown since 2014 research by Google found that 55% of teens and 41% of adults were using voice technology every single day.

So you don't miss out on this new and growing wave of user search, consider the following hacks you can use to optimize your content and pages for voice search.

1. Target conversational words in your title tag.

Personal assistant devices such as Google Home and Amazon Echo are evolving every day, and the consumer demand is high. More than 27 million of the devices were sold by the end of Q3 2017. These devices are making online searches a breeze — provided you can give the right voice command.

Prior to voice search, a customer could type on their phone or computer, “top restaurants in Los Angeles.” Then he or she could sort through the results to find the best fit.

However, voice search has changed everything. The same customer could ask a straightforward question like “Which restaurant serves breakfast near me?” With voice search, people ask for information on the web the same way they talk, in a natural way.

With voice searches, users are looking for quick answers without scanning through the page. Hence, it’s easier to ask, “Which restaurant serves breakfast near me?” to find the best result, rather than asking for “top restaurants in LA,” which is more easily navigated when you’re typing on a keyboard.

As a business owner, you have to understand that your customers are using conversational keywords via voice searches. Of course, voice searches are usually long, but they are questions or contains phrases that demand a quick response from the search engine. These question phrases have evolved tremendously over the years.

If you want to take advantage of the growing trend in question phrases and conversational keywords, here’s how:

Step 1: Visit a keywords research tool like Ubersuggest or AnswerThePublic for great ideas on conversational keywords.

Step 2: Once the tool has generated question-based and conversational keywords, analyze and select the ones that are relevant to your offer — or the idea you want your content to communicate.

Depending on your goals, if you find modifiers such as “who, where, why, when,” then you can tell that the searchers are in the awareness stage: They’re still researching. This should guide you on the type of content to create for them.

On the other hand, if you want to attract customers who are ready to do business with you or buy your product, choose conversational terms that have modifiers like:

• Reviews

• Best place

• Purchase

• Compare

• Download

• Subscribe

Note: Don’t just target these conversational keywords in your title tags. Use them as guidelines to create content that appeals to users' intent. There’s no need to stuff keywords or over-optimize -- just focus on answering their questions and watch your organic traffic soar.

2. Optimize specific landing pages for local customers.

Local business can benefit immensely from voice search. Why? Because mobile users in the U.S. and globally trust local businesses. They use their mobile devices on the go to find local businesses like banks, restaurants and coffee shops, among many others. According to a KPCB Internet Trends Report 2016, 22% of people used voice search for finding local information online. As such, you have to start creating specific landing pages to cater to prospects in your city.

People are searching for “near me” queries which, according to Google, have grown in popularity by more than 130% year over year. So what are you supposed to do with these “near me searches?”

Use them on your pages to drive in-store engagement to your brick-and-mortar business. When a customer conducts a local search and appends “near me” to a keyword, about 50%of these local mobile searches results in a lead visiting the store in a day.

In your product pages, include "near me" in your title tags, internal links and meta description and use as anchor texts with a bit of diversification.

3. Use structured data to provide quick answers.

Schema markup (often called Schema) is a set of tags or microdata that you can add to your HTML so that your page will display better in the search engine results pages (SERPs). When you add Schema markup to your HTML, it’ll enhance how your web page displays in the organic search results by ensuring that the rich snippets are optimized for search users.

Being featured with snippets means that when a voice search is triggered in any of the voice-enabled devices, the snippet is read and sourced aloud. Featured snippets return information such as addresses, timings, phone numbers, reviews and distance from the user's location.

Apart from the immense traffic that you can generate from rich snippets, you also boost your personal brand and authority. With voice search, you don't want to rank in position one but in position zero. That's the best position to be seen as an expert. So how do you get on the featured snippet?

Well, there’s no stipulated method for getting featured on the position zero. But one sure way to increase your chances is by answering user’s questions. You can simply check out a site like Quora, find questions related to your subject and answer them.

The beauty of voice search is that optimizing for it will improve your overall SEO strategy and help you drive organic traffic. The future of voice search can’t be predicted because there’s still work to be done. But it’s gaining considerable traction among mobile users and digital marketers.

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